Homicide:
Life on the Street

Homicide: Life on the Streets (H:LOTS) became a tradition on the midnite shift at Sarasota 9•1•1 when Lifetime was running the syndicated episodes. Midnite shift was never quite the same when they stopped running the series.

It’s regular show, too, came to a close. The series finale took place on NBC at the end of the 1998-99 TV season. I viewed the end of the series with mixed emotions. Clearly one of the best TV shows ever aired, it’s creativity hit its peak a couple of seasons ago and has never recovered, except for a few episodes here and there.

Still, I remained as loyal a fan of the show as I was when it first aired back in 1993. My loyalty certainly did not stem from the fact that my family and I used to live in Baltimore. Anyone who knows me at all knows that I thoroughly hated living in Baltimore, almost as much as I loved living in Washington, D.C.

It was, however, entertaining to be able to enjoy a TV show that was not only well written and superbly acted with characters that I so much enjoyed and still be able to recognize not only street names as they were used on the show but also to recognize places where they did the camera shots for the series. Places like the downtown World Trade Center, where my mother used to work, the Inner Harbor, where my family and I liked to spend an afternoon, Ft. McHenry National Park and the tunnel, and Druid Hill Park, a favorite of the producers.

One epsiode even showed the pedestrian bridge over Pratt Street that connected the buldings of the city college where I got my paralegal certification.

Other people have offered testimonials and tributes to the show, its actors, its story lines, the city in which is is set. I won’t do that other than to offer this:

Four things immediately come to my mind when I think of H:LOTS. First and foremost, the body of 15 year old Adena Watson lying in the rain. This case shadowed the entire show, just as the murder upon which it was based shadowed the book upon which the TV show was based. It was never solved. The prime suspect — and he remained a suspect only — died, leaving Detective Tim Bayliss (Kyle Secor) with basically no where to go with the case but also unable to just let the child murder case leave him alone.

The second incident: a gas leak at police headquarters. They are all standing outside the building. Det. Frank Pembleton starts to light up a cigarette. This massive hand reaches out and stifles the effort. G says: “It’s a gas leak, Frank.”

Third incident:    Bayliss: “You never say please. You never say thank you.”
                            Pembleton: “Please don't be an idiot. Thank you.”

Finally, there was the confused suspect who looked at the name tag Detective Munch was wearing and looked up puzzled, asking, “You’re a Defective Monk?”